Happy Driving!

We TeachingAuthors have been posting about our intended plotlines for 2015.
I so appreciate my fellow bloggers’ insights and their willingness to share their experiences, smarts and intentions for this coming year.

Like JoAnn, I’ve been walking a dog too this past week - my GrandDoggieDaughter Maggie, in the soul-freeing coatless-bootless-hatless-gloveless-scarfless clime of warm and sunny mountain-surrounded Phoenix.

I’ve been thinking on what I need/want/wish to share in this post and it is this: when it comes to plotlines, the character’s in the driver’s seat.

It took me forever - as in countless rejected manuscripts showcasing countless puppet-like characters - to understand this truth.

And not just as it applies to the plotline of a story I’m writing…but also to the writer’s plotline I’m living every day.
I need to know my character’s need/want/wish … and I need to know mine.
Otherwise neither of us can act, re-act, grow and triumph as we drive the twists and turns of our stories’ highways.
Digging deep within – my characters and myself - reveals the answer, always.

Fortunately, we’re but 19 days into our new year.

So as I work on my own writer’s story, I’m digging away, hoping to uncover my need/want/wish, helped by the following three insights I came upon the first week of January.

Marketing guru Seth Godin’s January 1 post – “USED TO BE” – set off non-stop sparks in my mind and heart.

The phrase “used to be,” it turns out, connotes neither failure nor obsolescence.  Instead, it signals bravery and progress.
“If you were brave enough to leap,” Godin posited, “who would you choose to 'used to be'?”
Hmmmmm…..I pondered.
The possibilities intrigued me.

In her January 4 Chicago Tribune column, writer Heidi Stevens suggested we skip declaring New Year’s resolutions and instead write a mission statement.
A mission statement, she wrote, “was less about what she should tackle and more about the shape she wanted her life to take.”
I liked that insight.  What struck me most was her own mission statement: to focus on what she knows to be true.
Hmmmmm….I pondered further.
More possibilities to consider.

Finally, Stevens’ fellow Chicago Tribune writer Mary Schmich shared an idea in her January 7 column that April Halprin Wayland echoed in her January 9 post:  choose one word to live by in the coming year.
Having to select that one word that would guide your new year was akin to “being dropped inside a Super Target,” Schmich wrote, “and asked to pick one object, and only one, that you would carry with you for the next 12 months.”
Once again, I pondered intriguing possibilities.
Embrace?  Flow?  Risk? Grow?  Leap?  Simply, be?

What and who I used to be.  My mission statement.  My one word for the coming year.

I believe knowing all of the above will help me finally nail my need/want/wish for 2015.

Just like that, I’ll be traveling my plotline, both hands on the wheel, eyes open and focused. 

Happy Driving to our TeachingAuthors’ readers!

Esther Hershenhorn

P.S.

Saturday, January 24, from noon to 4 pm (in respective time zones) is the first-ever National Readathon Day, a nation-wide reading session that allows you to promote reading while pledging and fundraising to support the National Book Foundation. Think of it like “a walk-a-thon charity drive, only you’re turning pages instead of walking laps.”

More, More, More

Today, I continue our Teaching Authors “What Are We ‘Plotting’ for 2015?” series. Deadlines loom for two educational publisher projects as well as a couple other things I hope to accomplish soon, so I promised myself I would keep this short. What I’m plotting is mostly more of the same: more writing, more submitting, and—this is the new part—more sticking my neck out.

On the first of the year, I wrote about my schedule for 2015. I blocked out more time to exercise and added in some time every week to focus on long-term goals. I have been walking more, which is good for my writing because something about the rhythm makes me think differently. I find myself jotting down notes and dictating text messages to send to my email. When I get home, surprise! Ideas!

my walking companion, Bea

One way I hope to stick my neck out is by participating in Poetry Friday more often. Today, I posted a poem on my blog in response to a challenge Joyce Sidman issued last week in an interview with Michelle Heidenrich Barnes on Today’s Little Ditty: a “Deeper Wisdom” poem, modeled after Joyce’s thoughtful “What Do the Trees Know?” in her gorgeous new poetry collection, Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold. I really enjoyed the process, especially with such an inspiring model poem.

I’m also researching editors and trying to submit more manuscripts more regularly. I’d love to participate in conferences. And my web site desperately needs updating. I’d better get to work!

JoAnn Early Macken

P.S. Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at Live Your Poem. . . with Irene Latham. Enjoy!

Doctor Who and Historical Fiction

http://morguefile.com/

As Mary Ann Rodman suggests, there is plotting and there is planning. But sometimes, especially when one reads and writes historical fiction, there’s the wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.

Historical fiction is the coming together of two opposing elements: fact and fiction. The controversy is grounded in conveying the ‘truth’ of history. Other popular genres have distinct rules that govern basic premises. Dystopian fiction, for example, features a futuristic universe in which the illusion of a perfect society is maintained through corporate, technologic, or totalitarian control. Using an exaggerate worse-case scenario, the dystopian story becomes a commentary about social norms and trends.

 But, historical fiction defies easy explanation. For some, historical fiction is first and foremost fiction, and therefore anything goes. Others condemn the blending of invention with well-known and accepted facts, and consider the genre a betrayal.

 Perhaps a better way to understand the genre is to take a lesson from The Doctor. Yes, that Doctor: “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause and effect…but actually, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.” Perhaps the same thing can be said of plot and the historical fiction.

 In historical fiction, setting is usually considered ‘historical’ if it is at fifty or more years in the past. As such, the author writes from research rather than personal experience. But as an old turnip, my personal history dates back to the years prior to Korean War. The Civil Rights Movement, the Freedom Riders, the Bay of Pigs, the JFK Assassination, the Landing on the Moon, and the first Dr. Who episode are not some fixed points in history but a function of my experience. Yet, for the last generations, these are often just dates in a textbook. And the plot is a linear expression that begins on a certain date. The award-winning book, The Watsons Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis (1995), depicting the Birmingham, Alabama church bombing of 1963, is often listed as historical fiction. Yet I remember vividly watching the events unfold on my parents’ black and white television.

 Defining the ‘historical’ in 'historical fiction' is a bit wobbly, depending upon the age of the


http://morguefile.com/

researcher and author.
 Historians work within a broad spectrum of data-gathering, gathering volumes of primary sources coupled with previous research. They use footnotes, endnotes, separate chapters, appendixes and other textual formatting to clarify their observations. Plotting and planning resemble Venn diagrams and flowcharts, looking similar to the opening credits of Doctor Who as the Tardis moves forward and backward in time. But the artistic nature of historical fiction presents several challenges in books for children. Events must be “winnowed and sifted”, as Sheila Egoff explains, in order to create forward movement that leads to a resolution. Authors choose between which details to include, and exclude, and this choice is wholly dependent upon the character’s goal. More important, resolution rarely happens in history. The same with happy endings. Because of the culling process, critics often claim that historical fiction is inherently biased.

Yet, nothing about history is obvious, and facts are often open to interpretation. Once upon a time, it was considered factual that the world was flat, that blood-letting was the proper way of treating disease, that women were emotionally and physically incapable of rational thought. In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but he didn’t discover America. In fact, some would say he was less an explorer and more of a conqueror. History tends to be written by those who survived it. As such, no history is without its bias. The meaning of history, just as it is for the novel, lays “not in the chain of events themselves, but on the historian’s [and writer’s] interpretation of it,” as Jill Paton Walsh once noted.

 Some facts, such as dates of specific events, are fixed. We know, for example, that the Battle of Gettysburg occurred July 1 to July 3, in 1863. The interpretations of what happened over those three days remains a favorite in historical fiction. My interpretation of the battle, in Girls of Gettysburg (Holiday House, August 2014), featured three perspectives that are rare in these historical fiction depictions: the daughter of a free black living seven miles north from the Mason-Dixon line, the daughter of the well-to-do local merchant, and a girl disguised as a Confederate soldier. The plot weaves together the fates of these girls, a tapestry that reflects their humanity, heartache and heroism in a battle that ultimately defined a nation.





http://www.morguefile.com/

Critics and researchers can be unrelenting in their quest for accuracy. The process of writing historical fiction, like researching history itself, is neither straightforward nor a risk-free process. As the Doctor tells his companion, and in so doing reminding everyone,  through those doors...

“… we might see anything. We could find new worlds, terrifying monsters, impossible things. And if you come with me... nothing will ever be the same again!” 

Bobbi Miller

Plotting for a New Year

     Happy New Year, readers. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season that included reading some of our favorite books from December.  (Too much to hope that much writing went on. At least not at my house.)

     So we are starting off 2015 with a discussion of plotting a story.

     Uh-oh.  Houston, we have a problem.

     I don't plot my stories. Ever,  So if you are hoping to learn how to plot in this post, you can stop reading now.  One of the other TA's will tell you everything you need to know in the following weeks.

     I'm here to tell the rest of you still reading, it's OK to not plot.

     I have visceral reaction to anything requires plotting. Anything that has to be done in specific sequential steps, sends me over the edge.  Cooking, math, putting anything together with instructions. I'm awful at all of those things. A couple of years ago, when educational testing discovered that my daughter has the same difficulty I learned this had a name...something like "difficulty with executive reasoning." (Which I suppose means I'll never be President...but I digress.) Sometimes dessert should come first.  I almost always read the end of a book first.  Working from step A to step B to step C just doesn't work for me.  Never has.

     I was the student who wrote the term paper first, then the outline.  When I was first trying to be a real writer (as opposed to that seat-of-my-pants writer I had been as a teen and young adult) I discovered that some real writers outlined everything they wrote as a first step.  This news was so discouraging I stopped writing for several years, because obviously, I had been doing it wrong.

    Of course, that didn't last forever. I went back to writing in the same old any-which-way-I can (including out of sequence) method.  I did learn a few things. I learned to plan before I wrote.

    Planning and plotting are not the same thing.  Plotting is knowing what happens first, then next, then next and at the end. I never know more than one of those things before I start writing.  I've stopped worrying about it.  Planning is knowing what you need to know before you type that first word.

   I've mentioned before that writing the minute you get a good idea is not usually the best thing to do.  You need to know your characters before you write about them.  Who can you write about more successfully?  Your best friend or someone you talked to for five minutes at a party? You should know your characters as well as you do your friends before you write about them. That's the first step in my Plan.

    Because once a librarian, always a librarian at heart, I think about what I don't know but should for my story. Do I need to research a geographic area?  A time period? Speech patterns and slang for a particular area?  A disease?  A career that I know nothing about?  Now is the time to get as many of those answers as you can, before you start writing. What is more frustrating than reaching page 100 and discovering you are missing a chunk of important information. (This will happen anyway, but not as much if you do it upfront.)

    This is also the time I pick my Imaginary Reader. Imaginary Reader is the kid I envision reading my book.  Imaginary Reader sits next to me while I write. Is IR a girl or a boy, or both?  How old? Do they like to read or not?  What about my story would interest them?  (Actually, I should probably come with my IR first. See?  That old executive reasoning problem.)

    So if you are not a Plotter, fear not.  You can be a Planner.  It's worked for me so far.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

And the hits keep on a-comin'!

A writer puts her/his heart and soul into crafting a picture book story. Over a period of weeks or months, she sweats and strains to get every little element exactly right. Finally, it's ready. The main character is enormously appealing. The language sings. The storyline crackles. Not one word is unnecessary or out of place.

She sends it off, and ... an editor agrees. Woo-hoo! Break out the bubbly!

A fabulous illustrator brings the story to exquisite life. The writer can't believe her luck. Flash forward two or three (or five) years, and she's holding her story – this perfect story – in her hands, a picture book at last.

Then ... more good news. Glowing reviews. STARS. Additional printings. Big sales. Her book soon grows more popular than she dared to dream it could, and then ...

Her editor asks for a sequel. I imagine this request elicits astonishment and elation (and perhaps the eensiest shiver of terror).

I can only imagine, since it hasn't happened to me yet. But I have been asked (not contracted) to write a picture book sequel. For me, the toughest part was beginning. How much should I refer back to the first book? SHOULD I refer back to the first book at all? Well, I figured it out. But it made me wonder what other authors consider the toughest thing about writing a sequel.

To find out, I asked three of them I admire. Here's what they had to say.

Jennifer Berne, on writing Calvin, Look Out! (illustrated by Keith Bendis, coming Aug. 5th, 2014 – eek, that's tomorrow!), sequel to Calvin Can't Fly (Sterling Publishing, 2010):

"I think my biggest challenge in writing the Calvin sequel was making it as good, as interesting, as compelling and entertaining as the first Calvin book. Of course, isn't that the same challenge in writing any book following a previous book, sequel or not?

"Writing the sequel was easier because I had come to know Calvin, his way of thinking, his way of talking, his passions and frailties. But the sequel was harder because I didn't want it to be too imitative of the original, yet it did need to feel connected and like a natural next adventure.

"I hope I succeed in meeting all my goals for Calvin, Look Out! Only time and my wonderful young readers will tell."

Bonny Becker, on writing A Library Book for Bear (illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton) and other sequels to A Visitor for Bear (Candlewick Press, 2008):

                                                                                   Photo credit:  Bonny Becker

"The biggest challenge without question is the problem of keeping the stories fresh. It's easy to think of situations that will frustrate Bear, but I don't want the escalation of the problem or the resolution to be too predictable. And I've tried to subtly move Bear's story along. His friendship with Mouse deepens and he's slowly coming out of his shell--in a way. At least, in the latest book, A LIBRARY BOOK FOR BEAR, Bear finally gets out of his house and there are actually other creatures in his world that he interacts with.

"Each sequel is easier in some ways and harder in others. I know these characters and their world better with each story, but, as mentioned, coming up with fresh situations and reactions doesn't get easier! It's also tempting to get lazy about it all--not work as hard for fresh language and gestures and such. So I work hard to reference back to earlier books--for example, Bear uses the skates he got in A BIRTHDAY FOR BEAR to get to the library and the humor works better if you know that Bear always ends up shouting--but I also want each book to be strong on its own.”

Pat Zietlow Miller, on writing Sophie's Seeds (currently in the pipeline), sequel to Sophie's Squash (Schwartz & Wade, 2013):

"My biggest challenge was that I had never imagined Sophie having a sequel. So I really had to start from scratch and ponder what she might do next.

"Plus, Sophie's Squash had been so well received that I felt a certain amount of pressure to do an equally good job. I hadn't ever felt that pressure before because I'd always written without anyone expecting it and waiting to see what I'd done.

"So writing Sophie's Seeds took longer and was a bit more painful, but I'm very happy with where we ended up and that Sophie got to have another adventure."

---------------

Count me among the biggest fans of Calvin, Bear & Mouse, and Sophie. Here's to their continuing stories. *clink*

Jill Esbaum
P.S.  You can now find me on Twitter @JEsbaum

The HappyWanderer

     Any former Girl Scouts out there?  I had a very short stay with the Girl Scouts, but during my time I learned any number of songs guaranteed to drive any adult insane if you sing them for hours on end on a road trip.  One of them was "The Happy Wanderer."  You know..."I love to go a wandering, along the mountain path, and as I go I love to sing, my knapsack on my back."

    OK, that's all I remember, but you get the gist.  What does this have to do with writing? April kicked off our current thread on Friday...are you a pantser (a person who just starts writing and finds their story as they go along) or are you a planner (someone who outlines and draws story arcs before you open a single document file?)

     I am somewhere in the middle, a "happy wanderer."  I am horrible at outlining. When we had to outline term papers in school, I would write the paper first, then go back and outline what I wrote. Even worse, I find it impossible to think in a linear fashion. I write a last chapter, then something in the middle, then something that I know will go somewhere, I just don't know yet.  For years I tried writing in sequence, one chapter after the other, only to find myself stuck on chapter two, every time.  I somehow thought that writers had it all in their minds, in order and a real writer's sentences flowed, one after the other, in the right order.

    Obviously, I was not a real writer.

    Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird (my personal writing bible) gave me permission to write horrible first drafts.  She gave me permission to write chapters as they come to me, in whatever order that might be.
I dislike rules, so my new rule for myself was "Just get the story down, anyway you can."

     However, I don't start writing the minute I get an idea. I live with it for a long time. At least a year, often longer. (You don't want to know how long I've been "living" with my current WIP). I do my research. My research leads to to subplots, new characters who then beget other characters. In other words, I wander.

    My first drafts are twice the size of my final one. I throw in everything but the kitchen sink. I pack for trips the same way. I put in way more stuff than I need, because, hey, you never know what you might need.  When I can't close my suitcase, I start re-evaluating. Do I need this?  Really?

    When I get to the end of my permissibly awful first draft, I start taking stuff out. Lots of stuff. The best piece of writing advice ever given to me was in the Vermont College MFA Program.  Here it is:  If you can't decide whether to take something out, ask yourself "How does this move the story along?" (Or as my writing students and critique group members know it as HDTMTSA). If that character, that scene, that description does not move your action forward, take it out.  In writing for kids, you really don't have the luxury of writing just to "admire the scenery" so to speak.

   So the answer to the question....I know my main characters well before I start (which I suppose is a form of outline), I know my setting, and I sort of know the emotional arc of the story. But how my characters get to where they are going?...that happens as I write. And re-write. And wander.

     Sooner or later I come to a place that feels like the end of the journey.  I'm done wandering, and am now wondering.  Wondering about the new place and characters that have been waiting ...possibly in my happy wanderer "knapsack on my back."

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

P.S. Today is Veteran's Day, where we remember those who have served out country in war and peacetime. This is a picture of two my favorite veterans., My mom, WAVE Frances Smith, and her brother, Seaman Jim Smith of the Merchant Marine. My Uncle Jim was the real life inspiration for Jimmy's Stars.

Summer writing goals or "get real!"

     I have to tell you that my initial response to the topic "summer writing goals" was "Summer writing goals? Hahahaha" (to quote Lucy of Peanuts fame.) For me at least, Summer Goals and New Year's Resolutions are the same thing. Only the weather is different.

      Every January I promise to lose weight, work out more, and at least try to read adult fiction. In a good year, I can make it to the neighborhood Super Bowl party, followed by a string of out-of-town school visits. The next thing I know, I'm on a plane, reading a children's book and eating overpriced airport M & M's.

     Each May for the last five years I have told myself that this was the summer I would finish The Novel.  I have worked on this book, for so long, that when I do return school visits, students ask if The Novel is coming out this year. I have to admit that no, I haven't finished, still writing.  I'd leave feeling like A Big Fat Failure who was never going to finish The Novel (or lose weight).

     However, this year was going to be different.

     From the summit of the third week of May, the summer and all of its possibilities shimmered at my feet. For the first time, our family vacation would begin the minute the last school bell rang. For once, my daughter's schedule wasn't studded with out-of-town skating competitions. For the first time in years I wouldn't be running a Young Writers workshop during what always turned out to be the hottest week in summer.
  
     In short, a free summer. Three empty sparkling months. This would be the summer that. . .

     I stopped short. I was about to make a Summer Goal.  Did I want to do this?

    Like most of you, I have to fit writing around my other obligations, which even pared to the minimum, are still a lot.  Circadian rhythms dictate that I am useless until about 9 am, walking into walls and such.  Left to my natural inclinations I would write all night.  I have to get my daughter up at 6 am. (Schools don't care about my Circadian rhythm.) So writing is shoehorned into the odd bits of time.  It's like the old joke, "How do you eat an elephant?" Answer: "One bite at a time."

    When I took stock at the beginning of this summer, I could see my "bites" had added up. I write out of sequence, and this particular book is divided into three "acts."  There were a few scenes missing from Acts Two and Three, but Act One, was a mere skeleton.  However, in writing backwards, I now knew the characters and setting better than I did when I first began this journey. Could I finish The Novel THIS summer? I have all this time and...

    Then I sat down with my manuscript and realized that not only did Act One need a lot of "fleshing out," but that there were a few bald spots in Acts Two and Three as well. Then I would have to go over the "finished" book to "fine tune" it . . .and discover more holes that needed filling and. . .

    No. I couldn't do it. I couldn't finish The Novel in three months, and more than I could lose ten pounds over a weekend. I thought some more. My writer's group was having a retreat at the end of July (which was this past weekend). Could I finish Act One by the third week of July? That seemed a do-able goal.

    Guess what?  I didn't finish Act One. I almost finished it. This a verse novel, and I know that Act One still needs two more poems, but I know exactly what they are. My critique group agreed, and saved me the trouble of having to revise Act One by showing me where and how to tighten the whole thing up.

     So, revised goal...finished Act One by the end of this month. Another doable goal. That's all I will focus on right now...not future plot holes and revisions to come. I am working on this goal. You will know when I have accomplished it, because you will hear a big old "yee-haw!" coming from Atlanta.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman   

When Plans Blow Up

A few months back, my summer-to-come looked about the same as the previous ones: teaching two six-week classes with a semester break before and after. Then my classes were canceled.

Surprise!

In addition to having all the time I wanted to write, work in the garden, and jettison some of the detritus in my workspace, I envisioned a glorious three months of camping, canoeing, and riding around on the tandem with my husband, who has his summers off from teaching.

Then he crashed his bicycle, breaking three ribs and his right hip socket. After spending a week in the hospital and undergoing surgery to repair his hip, he's home now, recovering nicely but hampered a bit by the crutches he'll need for three months.

My plans? Revised again. How? Here's what I told myself:

1. Count your blessings.

2. Take stock. Look closely at that To Do list. Decide what’s doable and what’s not really so important, and prioritize the important stuff.

3. Define minimum requirements. Simplify. Lower your standards. Recognize your limits. In other words, do what you can. Work around the edges if you can’t plunge in. I had planned an ambitious monarch butterfly study project that just isn’t going to happen this year. Instead, I hung a mosquito net from the side of the garage, and I’m protecting a few, watching them grow, taking pictures when I can, and hoping to figure out what I want to write about them.

4. Let everything else go. In the long run, a whole lot of effort turns out to be busy work. The garden is thriving without much attention from me. I wish I had taken pictures of the anemones waving in the wind on the top of our front hill. And the peonies! O, the peonies! Now we have day lilies, monarda, and daisies. From across the street, you can’t tell that yellow coneflowers are taking over, crowding out the smaller plants beneath them. I bet they’ll be pretty, too.

5. Take care of yourself. Don’t skip the walk to do the dishes. Write a snippet in a waiting room. And as April says, remember to breathe.

JoAnn Early Macken